I am asking the party in power to please stop using the elephant as the GOP symbol. It’s no longer appropriate.
I have loved elephants since I was a child. They’re huge and powerful but rarely assert their strength except when threatened or defending their young. A matriarchal society, elephants take good care of each other, particularly the young, which are never left behind. They honor their elders and they grieve openly for their dead.
The party that holds the elephant as its symbol said it would leave no child behind but then refused to fund its own after school programs, leaving behind 485,000 children. They said they would see to the health of all, yet 43.6 million have no health insurance. They said they would make war only as a last resort then sent our young off to fight when we were not threatened. And when they are killed, their caskets are shielded from view and no one grieves openly for them but their families. They said they would take care of the elderly, but they want to gut Social Security to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Medicare reform is a sad joke.
It is not in the nature of elephants to behave this way.
And while we’re at it, I want the media to stop referring to President Bush as a cowboy just because he owns a ranch in Texas and wears a hat that’s too big for his head. I have relatives who are real cowboys and while they consider themselves conservative and generally vote Republican, the current brand of neoconservatism doesn’t match their values.
Cowboys are nothing if not self-reliant. They’re fiercely patriotic, willing to fight when necessary, but they generally opt for peaceful solutions. Those who didn’t tended to shoot each other at High Noon. They consider themselves the true environmentalists, not tree huggers but thoughtful custodians of the land that sustains them. They don’t want the government to do this for them but they don’t want the government to give away their wild lands to miners and oil drillers, clear cut their forests and pollute the lakes and streams where they fish. And when it comes to coal bed methane extraction, I doubt you will find a real cowboy who doesn’t side with the Wyoming rancher whose cottonwood trees died and whose pastures won’t grow because the billions of gallons of salt-laden water flushed from those mines poisoned the earth that has for decades supported his family’s livestock. Even if he had some legal recourse, and it appears he doesn’t-anyone tried suing the federal government lately?-there’s no way to reclaim the land, to remove the salt from the soil and the groundwater. The stream no longer slakes the thirst of cattle, deer and elk nor can it irrigate fruit trees. And all the fish have died and all the birds have flown.
It’s not in the nature of real cowboys to behave this way.
Cowboys have traditionally voted for less-intrusive government, for state’s rights, fewer subsidies to wealthy corporations, even the farming ones, and for fiscal conservatism. What ever happened to that?
Now, it’s true that a lot of cowboys didn’t care much for Bill Clinton. But most of them did appreciate his dedication to balancing the budget. And they appreciated the fact that the rest of the world was still looking up to the America they love.
Next time the neocons say they have a mandate to pursue their flailing policies, some cowboy should remind them that good old red state Montana just elected its first Democratic governor in decades. Montanans know their fiscal fortunes depend on ranchers, outdoors sportsmen, tourism based on that beautiful open Big Sky country and, yes, even real cowboys.
So maybe the neocons who hijacked the GOP could give at least some of it back to the traditional Republicans with traditional conservative views. Or they could at least trade mascots with Democrats, whose nurturing ways more favor the elephants.
And, of course, the jackass should feel right at home in the West Wing and the Pentagon.
If not, maybe the media could just stop calling Bush a cowboy.